


the heart is hard to translate

by skitzofreak



Series: stardust in your spine [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Rated for very bad language, and a bad romance novel, i am probably a bad person, post scarif, swearing and dirty words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 19:04:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11812290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/pseuds/skitzofreak
Summary: Jyn finds a way to pass the time on a long transit. Cassian would like it noted that he Did Not Ask.





	the heart is hard to translate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AnnaFan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnaFan/gifts).



> This is for AnnaFan, because she gifted me with "Ikea Sex, Insert Tab A into Slot B" and I haven't stopped laughing since.

“What,” Jyn demanded suddenly into the comfortable silence of the U-wing, “does ‘lave’ mean?”

Cassian glanced up from the datapad propped against his bent knees, simultaneously lowering the star chart he had been cross referencing against the data. “To wash, I think,” he said absently, turning back to his star chart.

Jyn, sitting cross-legged next to him on the pull-out bunk, frowned at her own datapad. “To wash,” she repeated, then tried to fit that into place in the sentence she had just read. No, it didn’t work. Almost without thinking, she said aloud, “’He washed her nipple with his tongue.’”

Beside her, Cassian’s star chart twitched, just slightly. “What?”

“Well, it’s actually ‘he laved her nipple with his tongue,’ but if _lave_ means _wash_ then, no,” Jyn told him matter of factly, “You must be wrong. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Jyn,” Cassian said in the slow, careful voice he used when he thought someone was being irrational. “Is that the intel bundle from command?”

“Cassian,” Jyn replied in the same tone. “We’ve been going through that data for six hours straight. We have another three hours until we hit real space. I’m taking a break.” She held up her datapad as explanation. “Shara Bey gave me this novel. She said it was the funniest thing she’d ever read.”

“Ah,” was Cassian’s only reply, but he was looking at her datapad like it might suddenly pull a blaster on him.

“I’m not sure I get it,” Jyn rolled her shoulders and frowned a bit. “So far it’s mostly about these two rich fools who meet by accident and then spend the majority of their time groping each other but getting interrupted before they can get anywhere. Or thinking about groping each other and then being irritated when they can’t.”

“I see.”

“I think Shara’s sense of humor might just be very weird.”

“You should tell her that,” Cassian’s voice lightened at last to something a little less careful and a little more amused. Jyn flashed him a quick smirk, pleased to note the relaxed drop of his shoulders. His back didn’t seem to be hurting him much, even though they’d both been sitting on the bunk for roughly three hours, and he’d been piloting for a while before that. He was finally starting to really heal, all these months after Scarif.

Jyn narrowed her eyes at the datapad, feeling a bit tired and grumpy from hours of reading through banking information and small business contracts in the hopes of finding some weakness they could exploit on their target. She’d wanted a good laugh to take her mind off the boring grunt work of intelligence that never made it into the holovids. The endless frustrations of a pair of people that Jyn could in no way relate to didn’t really strike her as particularly funny, however. Although -

“I think it means ‘lick,’” she realized suddenly. “”To lave,’ I mean. It probably means _lick_.” She pursed her lips. “Fifteen.”

Cassian’s attention was back on his star chart, though she caught a quick flash of his eyes when he glanced at her over the top of it. “Fifteen?”

“If ‘lave’ means ‘lick,’ then that’s fifteen different ways to describe licking someone’s body so far.”

“…Inventive,” he murmured, very definitely not looking up from his star chart this time.

Jyn smirked a little, saying meditatively, “In fairness, some of those are pretty funny. ‘She cherished his lips with her tongue’ is pretty good. And ‘probed her frenzied mouth.’ Although that one sounds a bit…” she grimaced. “Clinical.”

Cassian did not respond.

Jyn shrugged to herself and tapped her datapad. The silence settled slowly back to the comfortable quiet of before, and Jyn relaxed back against the wall of the U-wing. This, she thought lazily, this was one of the best parts of her life. These times when she was warm and safe, somewhere quiet with Cassian nearby and no immediate, pressing problems to fight. Cassian shifted his weight next to her without any pained lines tightening around his mouth for the first time in weeks, and Jyn felt a little flush of triumph. _This is probably what peace feels like_ , she told herself, and allowed herself one long breath in and another out, her eyes closed, just dwelling in the calm. Then she cuddled back against the thin pillow she’d stolen from the bunk and went back to the sexual misadventures of his Grace the Lord Chancellor Matheus Holdon Tarkquin of the Noble House of Kwa and…what was it again? …oh, yes, _Franny_.

She got to the next chapter in her truly terrible novel, and nearly choked at the first paragraph. “Holy shit,” she coughed.

Cassian reached out and pressed a hand against her back, rubbing slightly. “You okay?”

Jyn nodded, waving him away. “Fine, fine, sorry, just…” she flapped the datapad at him in explanation.

He raised his eyebrows. “Find something?”

“’Ragged pleasure struck his soft stones, then raced up his throbbing cock,’” Jyn read out, struggling to keep her voice under control. “That sounds like a really painful way to get a hard-on,” she joked, shaking her head. “The author must be from the Mid-Rim. That’s the only place I’ve ever heard someone call their balls ‘soft stones.’”

“You’re still,” Cassian said in a slightly sharp tone, stopped, started again more neutrally, “You’re still reading that?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “I told you, I’m taking a break. I promise I’ll get back to what’s-his-name’s fascinating investment portfolio in a bit.” He was looking at her over the top of his star chart again, one eyebrow raised in what she thought was a rebuke, but when his expression didn’t change, she tilted her head and stared back at him. “What?”

“I thought,” he started, back to that careful tone, “you said it wasn’t funny.”

“No, it’s growing on me,” she grinned. “It has almost as many words for ‘dick’ as it does for ‘licking.’ ‘Throbbing cock.’ ‘Hard rod.’” She snickered, pitched her voice to a dramatic low, “ _’pulsating member_.’”

“ _Jyn_.”

He raised both eyebrows at her now, and she raised her own right back. “ _Cassian_ ,” she tapped the datapad’s screen meaningfully, “I’ve already read through almost a hundred pages of the galaxy’s two most awkward people failing to fuck. I’m _invested_ now. I need to know if they figure it out before the evil twin brother kills the girl. Or screws her before the good brother can.” She blinked, looking up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “Or both, I guess.”

“Jyn,” His voice was still careful, but there was a note of…of what? Jyn turned to look at him critically, trying to see what had him wound so tight. “Are you really going to sit there and read…filth?”

“ _Filth_?” This time Jyn couldn’t quite choke back the laugh. Cassian, whom she had once personally seen drop to his knee in order to punch an attacking Kiffar warrior directly in the crotch, sounded like a scandalized Great Auntie from a pretentious Core-world holodrama. Cassian, who routinely dealt with hookers and drug dealers and even karking slavers when he had no choice, staring at her like she’d just dropped trou and mooned the High Command. Cassian, who could throw on some of the sleaziest personas at the drop of a datachip when they had to walk through the darker corners of the universe, unable to look directly at the _trashy_ _romance novel_ in her lap. “ _Really_ , Cassian?”

He glared at her, his ears turning slightly red. Jyn was starting to suspect that his ears’ tendency to redden when he was embarrassed or uncomfortable might be why he kept his hair longer than strictly fashionable. At the moment, however, with no one around but Jyn to see, he’d tucked his hair back. She could see the flush creeping around the side of his neck and up to those tell-tale ears. Jyn had the sudden impulse to reach up and trace the round curve of his ear with her fingertips, wondering if his skin would feel hot to the touch. She covered the momentary urge with a smirk and looked back at the datapad.

“It’s not really all that dirty,” she promised. “Like I said, they keep getting interrupted before anything actually _happens_.”

“Surprisingly, that doesn’t help,” he muttered sarcastically, still glaring but raising his star chart and pointedly looking down at it like he was searching for the Lost Treasure of the Ancient Lothal Conglomerate.

 _Help?_ She tried not to think too hard about what he meant by _that_.

His ears were still a little red.

Jyn lifted her datapad. “I’m worried this poor bastard doesn’t actually know how sex works, though,” she told him nonchalantly. “Right now he keeps talking about how he wants to, ah, ‘plow her fertile fields.’” She turned to Cassian with an exaggerated contemplative expression. “I’m guessing his dick is the plow.”

“This is punishment for waking you up an hour early this morning, isn’t it?” he asked dryly, flicking his star chart at her knee and shaking his head. “I told you if we left earlier we could arrive before evening rush and get through port customs faster.”

“Or you could have just let me sleep three hours longer and we’d have gone through customs _after_ the evening rush,” she shot back, unperturbed. She’d actually already forgotten about his early morning wake up call, although she’d been less pleased than usual to find him leaning against her doorframe, waiting for her. Jyn didn’t get enough sleep not to begrudge the few times she managed it for more than a couple of hours at a time, and she’d actually been on a five hour streak when he came to get her. Not that she wouldn’t give up any amount of sleep to go anywhere with Cassian the moment he crooked his finger. (He didn’t need to know that, but Jyn could admit it to herself, at least).

On the other hand, ‘punishing you for waking me up’ sounded a hell of a lot better than ‘I desperately want to make you laugh and if reading a dirty book does it, then I will consume a damn library.’

“I guess ‘plowing’ her is better than when he was imagining ‘burying himself up to the hilt,’” Jyn went on doggedly, looking him dead in the eye with a deliberate challenge. “That one sounded like he was stabbing her.”

Cassian cleared his throat slightly. “I thought a plow was just a big blade.”

Jyn wrinkled her nose. “Damn, actually, I think it is. That makes the whole reference to ‘sliding himself through her welcoming furrows’ a little fucking _concerning_.” She smirked again, licking her dry lips and watching him stare at his star chart like it might show him an escape path from this conversation. “Depending on what _furrows_ he’s thinking about.” She paused for effect, then added blandly, “Probably between her tits, is my guess.”

He didn’t move, but the red on his ears seemed to deepen slightly. Then, to her surprise, he asked in a low voice, more peevishly muttering to himself than talking directly to her, “Then what the hell are her _fields_ supposed to be?”

“No karking clue,” Jyn tried to sound as casual as she could, though it was hard when she could _just_ see the hint of a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. “There’s a lot of farming imagery going on here. Although I’m guessing her ‘sweet lush garden’ is probably in _this_ general area,” she made a vague gesture at her pelvis. “Wait, do you plow a garden? Isn’t that just for big fields?”

“I was never a farmer,” Cassian told her quietly, the smile fading into something darker and heavier. “Fest was a cold planet.”

Jyn bit her lip, then said resolutely, “Well, _I_ was a farmer, for a bit, and I’m pretty damn sure you don’t plow a vegetable patch.” She watched him carefully from the corner of her eyes and said firmly, “You hoe it.”

Cassian bowed his head, a little sound that might have been a cough or a laugh trapped behind the lips he stubbornly kept closed tight. Jyn glared at him a little. “Oh come on, that was a good one.”

“Very clever,” he allowed softly, still not looking up at her, or laughing, although the faint smile was back in his eyes and now tugging at his lips.

Jyn decided to take that victory while she could, and shifted back comfortably against her pillow. She didn’t look at him again, but she felt when Cassian shot her a quick glance, as if checking that she wasn’t about to attack him with more dick-as-a-farming-tool metaphors. Then he also settled back against the wall of U-wing, folding his star chart and picking up the datapad instead. She debated offering him the pillow, but there was a good chance he not only wouldn’t take it, but would get mildly irritated if she insisted. He didn’t like when Jyn appeared to be making sacrifices for him, especially if he thought it had anything to do with his back injuries from Scarif. It was endearing, and irritating, and Jyn generally got around it by pretending that whatever she was doing or giving up was all part of her personal preference, and had nothing to do with her partner whatsoever. He didn’t always buy it, probably wouldn’t buy it with the pillow, but it worked often enough for her to keep it up.

Jyn looked back at her novel.

And then collapsed against Cassian’s arm, laughing. “ _Eh ner ori’dush kar’ta_ ,” she swore in Mandolarian, her head rolling along Cassian’s shoulder. Life had not often given Jyn the safety to laugh out loud, so it sounded more like quiet gasps, and she instinctively slapped a hand over her mouth to muffle even that. She probably sounded like she was choking to death, actually.

Cassian clearly thought so, because he slid a quick hand against her throat, checking for her pulse, and then dropped it almost as fast as she took a deep, shuddering breath and then burst into soft laughter again.

“Please note that I am not asking,” Cassian said from above her head, sounding resigned.

“No- noted,” Jyn gasped. Then, in as dramatic a voice as she could manage around her laughter, said, “She just described getting wet as, as…” Jyn held up the datapad to read it again. “She felt ‘ _honeyed_ _dewdrops on the petals of...of her secret flower_.’ S _hén me niǎo,”_ she wheezed a curse that Baze had taught her, much to Chirrut’s clear disapproval, pleased to have an opportunity to use it _._ “Her _secret flower_ , Cassian. _Shit,_ I really don’t think…don’t think either of these kriffing idiots have ever even _seen_ a naked woman.”

“ _Ella está tratando de matarme,”_ Cassian grumbled against her hair.

“No, no, Flower Girl isn’t killing anyone, that’s the evil brother, remember?” Jyn tilted her head and looked up at him, still gasping a little as she tried to get her face back under control. “ _Dewdrops_ ,” she sniggered, closing her eyes and dropping her chin again. “Maker fucking wept, Cassian, no wonder these people can’t seem to just bone.”

“Bone,” Cassian repeated, and she tilted her head back again to see that he was looking up at the ceiling like he was praying for strength. “Bone,” he muttered under his breath, like he couldn’t quite get over it.

Jyn turned slightly so she could look at his face without straining her neck, still leaning hard against his side. “Yeah, boning. Banging,” she added obligingly, like she thought he was confused by the word. “Humping. Boinking. Stuffing the muffin.”

Cassian turned and looked down at her, and now he was flat out glaring. The sting of his glower was somewhat diluted by the bright red flush of his ears that was now definitely flooding down his neck and tinging the edges of his cheeks. Jyn’s mouth twitched with the urge to grin again, but she fought it back and tried to keep her face as innocent as she could. “Doing the horizontal tango,” she went on, raising an instructional eyebrow at him. “Making the beast with two backs. Venery. Shampooing the wookie. Dirty dancing.”

His eyebrow twitched, his lips thinned, and Jyn felt the grin splitting her face despite her best effort. “Knocking boots. Shocking the mynock,” she gave in, laughing again as she stared him down. “You know,” she wiggled her fingers at him helpfully, “Fucking.”

Cassian closed his eyes and took a long, slow breath. For a second, Jyn thought maybe she had pushed it too far, crossed some line.

Then he looked down at her, a dangerous glitter in his dark eyes, and spit a stream of swift, smooth words in his native tongue far too quickly for her to catch. She managed to pick out at least two different words for “fuck” and a reference to someone’s mother, and a phrase that she was almost sure meant “your beautiful filthy mouth,” but the rest rolled by too fast for her to hope to understand. When he finally stopped, she waited a moment to see if he would start up again, mildly disappointed when he didn’t. The flush had spread all the way down his throat and disappeared into his collar, hard to see in the cheap lights of the ship, but definitely there. _Whatever he just said_ , Jyn thought a little dazedly, _must have been kriffing obscene._

She raised a finger and pointed it at him. “You have _got_ to translate that for me.”

Cassian glared at her, then faster than she could follow, he buried his hand into her hair, said, “No,” in a flat voice, and crushed his beautiful filthy mouth against hers.

It caught Jyn a little by surprise, but then, she was nothing if not adaptable. She responded immediately, and with enthusiasm, opening her mouth to let him brush his tongue along hers, nipping back at his bottom lip and smiling against his lips when he responded with a quiet sound in his throat. It wasn’t quite a groan, but she had an idea for how she might get one out of him.

She dug her fingers into the muscles at the nape of Cassian’s neck, and almost laughed with delight when he groaned against her mouth and shuddered slightly under her hands. She _knew_ it.

This, she thought with the small corner of her brain still capable of detached rationality, was probably going to become the new best part of her life.

She was about half a second from swinging her leg over his lap, and hoping he would wrap his calloused hands around her hips and pull her in against him, when something trilled insistently from the cockpit.

Cassian jerked as if slapped, pulling away from Jyn and staring at her with wide eyes. Jyn frowned and leaned forward to chase him, damn the noise, but it trilled again and she realized a moment late that it was a priority alert from command. She blinked at Cassian as it trilled a third time, and then her heart dropped into her gut as his neutral mask suddenly slammed into place on his face. She even felt the line of his jaw go flat and unresponsive under her palm, and he pulled away before she could react.

Without a word, he got up and moved to the cockpit, picking up the headset there and slapping the response switch. Jyn sat back in the bunk, feeling flushed and cheated and worse, worse than anything, _abandoned_. A few meters away, Cassian spoke in a crisp undertone to the other end of the line, but Jyn didn’t bother trying to pick out individual words. He’d tell her what was so _kriffing_ important when he was done. In the meantime, she could try to get her damn face under control and maybe swallow back some of the…shame? Anger? Jyn closed her eyes and told whatever the hell her roiling emotions were doing to knock it the fuck off and let her get back to her life.

They could do that. They could just…not talk about it. Or think about it.

Jyn felt her heart racing painfully in her chest, and it had nothing to do with how flushed and restless he’d made her with his low, intense voice and his gods-damned gorgeous mouth.

It would be okay. She could handle this. This wouldn’t drive him off, not after months of fighting together and bleeding together and working quietly side by side. She could get her partner back and have those quiet moments again. They wouldn’t be more than that, maybe never more than people who watched each other’s backs and refused to leave the other behind – but shit, a year ago she would have killed to have even a fraction of that trust in anyone, what more did she need than to know he would always come back for her? To know that she would drag herself through fire to get to him? She swallowed hard and ordered herself not to feel sick. She wasn’t going to lose him because she got a little carried away with her joke. He wasn’t going to leave her over a little awkwardness.

Jyn took a deep, careful breath, and listened to the indistinct murmur of Cassian’s voice as her heart slowed and her faint nausea faded.

Finally, she heard a click as Cassian switched off the secure line, and then a soft thump as he tugged off the headphones and clipped them back to their spot on the console. “New objective,” he called over his shoulder, not quite turning around. “We’re going to Neshtab first. Good thing we brought the parkas.” He was quiet for a moment, and then his shoulders rose and fell slightly, as if he was sighing. Jyn watched him quietly, waiting.

Cassian stood up, and leaned against the pilot seat, looking back at her. It was darker by the cockpit, with only the running lights on to save power, so she couldn’t pick out all the nuances of his expression. Something tight in her chest loosened slightly, though, because she could see that at least he didn’t have that mindless, bored look on his face, neutral in all the worst ways. At least he wasn’t entirely shutting her out any more.

“Are we okay?” Jyn asked softly, hating that she couldn’t risk anything stronger without fear of her voice cracking.

Cassian seemed startled at her question, eyes briefly going wide before he glanced down at the deck, an old trick of his that bought him time to get his reactions under control. “I am,” he said at last, just as soft. “If you are.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Fine.” Then she forced her lips to twist into a small half smile, and said as lightly as she could manage, “Maybe next time you’ll think twice before you get any bright ideas about early starts.”

He laughed, a low, brief sound, and Jyn’s heart clenched painfully even as it finally, _finally_ slowed to its normal pace. “I’ll remember who I’m messing with,” he nodded his head at her datapad. “I guess you can tell Shara you found it funny after all.”

Jyn blinked, glanced at the forgotten datapad, and then shrugged. “Guess I can.”

“We’ll drop out of hyperspace in ten minutes, then I’ll calculate the jump to Neshtab,” he told her, and he sounded so utterly normal, exactly like the last hour hadn’t happened at all that Jyn sort of wanted to thank him and sorted of wanted to throw something at him. “It’ll be another hour to get there.”

“I need a nap,” Jyn told him, unceremoniously shoving his datapad and star chart onto a pile and setting them on the floor by the bunk. “Have to make up for that hour you stole this morning. Wake me when we get there.”

“I will.” Cassian stepped across the small cabin and stooped to pick up his stuff. Jyn rolled on her side with her back to him and resolutely closed her eyes. “Sleep well, Jyn,” he said quietly from behind her.

Jyn listened to him moving around behind her, where she couldn’t see him, and reminded herself that he was the first person since she was eight that could do so without sending a spike of fear through her belly. She could afford to let her guard drop, could turn her back and sleep even with him just out of arm’s reach, and not worry for a second that he would slit her throat or worse. That was more than she had ever really had. And if that was all he wanted to give her, then that was enough. It was enough.

Jyn lay quietly in the bunk listening to the faint sounds of Cassian settling into the pilot chair behind her, and clutched her mother’s crystal as he set their new course.

It would be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I've read a lot of bad romance novels, guys. In fact, a couple of the things Jyn reads are paraphrases of actual novel quotes. (Note that this is not to hate on Romance novels as a genre, because there's a lot of sexism and misogyny in that particular hobby. It's more just a joke about how many romantic books I've read where I just sort of wanted to cringe at the, um, metaphors.) 
> 
> (Also, I could not resist the 'dirty dancing' line, because Diego Luna was in Havana Nights and is such an adorable, dorky teenager and so extremely un-Cassian-like it's sort of painful.)
> 
> (Also also: your worst Romance Reading Cringe Experience, give them to me! I love that shit, I swear. I'm already dying over some of these comments)


End file.
